


Motherfucker

by trekkiepirate



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Choose Your Own Ending, Eliot POV except for a small section where we catch up with Penny post mindmeld with The Monster, I overthink the reasons people say words, M/M, wherein we see Eliot's 'I must learn about the Monster' thought process
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22125862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trekkiepirate/pseuds/trekkiepirate
Summary: Eliot needs to get Quentin to believe him and he needs to do it as soon as possible. “Fifty years,” their lifetime together. “Who gets proof of concept like that?”Eliot doesn’t know how long it’s been for Quentin, but he hopes that Quentin can remember the conversation Eliot had buried because of how truly he shattered his own heart when he broke Quentin’s.“What?” Quentin is still, hesitant. He remembers.“Peaches and plums, motherfucker,” Eliot reaches out and shoves Quentin’s shoulder, gently but insistent. “I’m alive in here,” he smiles and leaves his hand on Quentin.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 8
Kudos: 60





	1. Main Story

**Author's Note:**

> This stemmed from the idea that, amongst all the other things he said, there was a reason that Eliot called Quentin a motherfucker while he had control of his body in the park.
> 
> CHOOSE YOUR OWN ENDING  
> The bulk of the story is this first chapter, the 2nd chapter is the canon complaint sad ending, the 3rd chapter is the happy fix it.

Q’s standing there, in a button-down shirt with short hair, looking like the most beautiful thing Eliot has ever seen.

Eliot knows it’s not his imagination anymore. Couldn’t be. He’s never seen Quentin’s hair like that or wearing these, frankly, stylish clothes. Maybe Margo had finally gotten her wish and taken him shopping for a new wardrobe.

But it’s still Quentin. The love of Eliot’s stupid waste of a life, looking at him. “Q,” Eliot breathed, relieved and feeling like his smile might break his face. “Q.”

Quentin doesn’t believe him. Eliot can only imagine what The Monster has put him through. He’s shaking his head, willing Quentin to see the truth in his eyes. “It’s me. It’s Eliot.”

“Bullshit, come on,” Quentin is gesturing Eliot, no gesturing The Monster, forward.

“It’s Eliot,” he stresses. Quentin’s still calling bullshit.

Eliot can feel The Monster coming to take control back. He’s not angry, more bemused, maybe even a little impressed that Eliot managed to go through the door back to consciousness. Not running to take over, just walking steadily forward with no plans to stop.

Eliot needs to get Quentin to believe him and he needs to do it as soon as possible. “Fifty years,” their lifetime together. “Who gets proof of concept like that?”

Eliot doesn’t know how long it’s been for Quentin, but he hopes that Quentin can remember the conversation Eliot had buried because of how truly he shattered his own heart when he broke Quentin’s.

“What?” Quentin is still, hesitant. He remembers.

“Peaches and plums, motherfucker,” Eliot reaches out and shoves Quentin’s shoulder, gently but insistent. “I’m alive in here,” he smiles and leaves his hand on Quentin.

Eliot sees the glorious moment when Q believes him. When he knows it’s truly Eliot talking.

The Monster is taking control back, but Eliot still sees Quentin take a small step towards him.

“Eliot,” said just as soft and wondering as Eliot spoke Quentin’s name. 

Then Eliot’s back, stepping through the door back into his imaginary Physical Kids cottage.

Charleton’s there. “Did it work?”

“I hope so,” Eliot sighs as he leans against the closed door. He kicks off the door and collapses onto the nearest sofa.

“Fuck,” Charleton says sagely.

Eliot nods. “You can say that again.”

“Fuck.”

“No, I didn’t mean-“ Eliot shakes his head, “never mind.”

“What was the memory?” Charleton asks, sitting on the coffee table.

Eliot sighs. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever had, followed swiftly by the most terrible thing I’ve ever done. But I got my door and I found him. Quentin. I didn’t see anyone else; I don’t know if they were there.”

“He’s the one with the floppy hair and the chalk,” Charleton nods to himself, clearly proud of his recall.

“Yeah. We… it’s complicated but we lived a whole life together. Fifty years. We got married, to each other and our darling Arielle. Fillorian girl. She sold peaches and plums. We had a son, grandkids. I… when our son, Teddy, was still a newborn we had a fight. Something stupid, maybe Q took the last piece of bread or someone woke Teddy from a nap or me from a nap. But we fought. Sniping at each other mostly. No, wait, Teddy hadn’t been woken up because we were whispering, so he was asleep. Anyway, insults were flying. I shoved his shoulder and called him a motherfucker. He started laughing.”

Charleton looks blank but Eliot forges on ahead, carried by the memory.

“Now that Teddy was born, Arielle was a mother. So he was a motherfucker. Now he’s laughing and I start laughing. Then Arielle comes in so we explain it to her and she’s laughing. Of course we wake up Teddy, but he starts smiling because he was at that imitation stage, you know, hadn’t worked out laughing just yet.”

Once again Charleton looks like he isn’t sure if Eliot was even in his right mind anymore.

Eliot shakes his head. “It became a thing, after that, part of making up when we fought. Calling Q a motherfucker. Nudging his shoulder. Making him laugh. Stupid little things like that, fifty years of them. Fifty fucking years of inside jokes, idiotic little fights over nothing, being his husband. All this history and we remembered. We had a chance to do it all over again. Q asked me to. Laid his heart bare and I just steamrollered right over it. Played it off like it didn’t matter. It was the most important moment of my life and I just snuffed it out.” He sinks back into the couch, suddenly feeling all fifty of those years on his shoulders.

“I just… I only had a minute to talk to Q, prove it was me. I needed to pack as much of me, of us, into that time. To prove it. Prove I’m alive. I ruined things and he still… he’s still trying to help me. Now Q knows I’m alive, and I know him, he’ll stop at nothing to bring me back. He’s like that with people he… loves,” Eliot whispers the last word, still stunned at the love he saw in Q’s eyes. Quentin still loves him, present tense. Probably only as a friend, but Eliot can live with that. Hopefully he just lives long enough to tell Q that he loves him. Properly loves him. And will spend the rest of his life loving him if Quentin can see his way to forgiving Eliot for being such a bastard. Once they finish up this Monster business.

Eliot sits up, an idea forming. “Charleton? I know the Happy Place is all my memories, but what about The Monster? His subconscious is here too, it has to be. In some, some hidden corner.” Leaping to his feet, Eliot grins. “We can find it. Find his memories. There might be something in them, something we can use to defeat him. Maybe from the inside or we can get a message to Penny. He’s psychic.”

Finally, a reaction from Charleton. “That’s impossible. Those creatures, they’re hunting us down every moment we’re not in here. It’s bad enough searching through your memories and you want to go farther in? We’d be fuck.”

“Fucked,” Eliot corrects. “We just need some more friends. Probably some frenemies too. Heck, there’s some people I’d be glad to feed to those fuckers. I just need people to distract the creatures. An army of them.” He closes his eyes and thinks. Of Brakebills and Fillory. Of Whitespire and Indiana. Past conquests and present friends. When he opens his eyes again, there’s barely standing room left as everyone looks around at everyone else.

Quentin stands at the front, flanked by Margo and Fen, just like before. Well Margo and Fen are just as before, the Quentin that stands there is the one Eliot caught a glimpse of in the… he thinks it was a park. Q pushes his hair behind his ears and Eliot smiles at the familiar gesture, before his eye is caught by an identical motion nearby.

Teddy, all grown up like the day he left home, is on his dad’s left with Arielle over his shoulder, smiling and so beautiful Eliot feels a sob in his throat with how much he misses her. Beyond them is anyone Eliot could pull from his memories. His father and brothers make disgusted faces at his one night stands and college boyfriends. There’s two Penny’s, the one from this timeline and timeline 23, both rolling their eyes at Todd. Ugh, Todd. Fogg is drinking from a flask as he stands next to Tick and Rafe (with Abigail on his arm). Humbledrum and Fray are being side eyed by Kady and Julia. Even Mike is there, standing next to Martin Chatwin, minus the moths. Eliot can feel bile rise but he swallows it back down. Right, he knows who he’s sacrificing first.

“Attention,” Eliot claps his hands, feeling like a king once more. “We’re gonna dig all the way through my memories to get into The Monster’s. We gonna find anything at all that’ll help everyone in the real world.”

“Isn’t this the real world?” Todd asks.

Eliot sighs, annoyed at being cut off during his inspirational pep talk. “Okay, Martin, Mike and Todd,” he frowns, “you three are at the front. Dad, assorted family members I don’t speak to anymore, you’re on the rear flanks. Humbledrum is the tallest, so he’s lookout. We’re going through some heavy shit, so be glad none of you have to deal with object permanence. Ready, okay,” he takes Quentin’s hand and kisses it; does the same with Margo’s, even as she growls about the sheer amount of carnage she’s gonna wreak. The Destroyer indeed.

“Right,” he needs a rallying cry. Don’t armies have rallying cries? God, what he’d give for a drink right now.

A glass appears on a table. Eliot sighs. “Later.” The glass disappears.

“Right,” Eliot straightens his spine and clears his throat, trying to buy time while he thinks of the most motivational words he can.

Quentin squeezes his hand and smiles at him.

“Peaches and plums, motherfuckers!”

Arielle’s giggle can be heard as everyone repeats what he said in varying degrees of enthusiasm.

By the time he’s lost everyone all over again (and he thanks any god, who isn’t a dick, that might be listening that he hadn’t had to see most of their deaths. Although feeding his imaginary dad to the creatures while going past the memory of Neitherlands cannibals eating his dad was a bit of a delight) Eliot has info. It’s not much. And it’s not fucking good news. One Monster could destroy their world and it turns out there’s a sister. The only consolation is knowing that the memory of that sister is buried so far deep that The Monster would need someone like Penny to find it. Which means Penny would be in The Monster’s mind, which is also Eliot’s. He downs his drinks and tuts to refill it.

So Eliot sits. And drinks. And paces. And wonders where Charleton went. He’d been left at the cottage while everyone went on their suicide mission. When Eliot came back, though, Charleton was gone.

Until one day. One day he feels like something’s different. There’s still nothing when he looks out the windows, but he sits on the stairs anyway, hands folded. He mentally heads to where he feels the disturbance in the Force and plants the door to the cottage there.

Penny comes in and Eliot is up in a second, knowing time is already running out. “Thank god you saw the door.”

Penny backs up and Eliot holds up his hands. “No, it’s me, it’s me. It’s the real me. It’s Eliot, okay?” He’s babbling and he needs to get to the point. Eliot’s thought for ages about what message he’d want Penny to pass on, to Quentin. He never found the right words and to be honest he has knowledge that could mean the difference between victory and death. So he wrote it down. There’s a chance Penny won’t be able to take the paper with him, but Eliot has become someone who tries.

So he sums things up as a mind palace. “There’s some major shit I need to tell you. First,” he hands Penny the paper, “give Quentin this. If you can. Now, the bad news. There isn’t just one Monster. There’s two. He has a sister. That’s why he needs the stones. They’re body parts to bring her back. But it is only a matter of time before he remembers it, too okay? So you have to-“

“Percy 23? Percy 23?” They hear from outside.

Penny tucks the paper into his pocket. “Shit.”

“Go, go, go, go,” Eliot watches Penny leave and leans on the wall. There’s nothing more he can do from here. Going back to the memory of Quentin and him in the throne room doesn’t make a door appear anymore. Only one life-altering revelation per person, he guesses. Eliot closes his eyes and hopes that when he opens them again, he’s back in his body. With Quentin and Margo standing there.


	2. Sad Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HERE BE THE ANGST! Warning for (offscreen and implied) canon character death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We start with Penny's POV post Monster Mind Meld, then we switch back to Eliot.

Penny wakes up. He feels like shit warmed over, but he needs to tell Julia and Quentin what’s going on. He’s leaning heavily on the chair as he tells them. Everything Eliot told him, everything that has made this fucking fight so much harder.

Penny finally collapses on the couch because his legs are about to give out and Julia comes to his side. Quentin is still bent over a book, mouth moving as he reads. “Eliot,” Penny says.

Quentin’s head snaps up. “Did he…” his eyes dart to Julia, but he presses on, “did Eliot say anything else?”

Penny digs into his pocket and it’s not there. “Shit.” He looks at Quentin’s face, cautiously hopeful. “He wrote something down for you, gave it to me, but I couldn’t bring it with me.”

“What did it say?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think I should read it. And I was kinda distracted having The Monster threatening to flay me alive.”

Penny watches the hope on Quentin’s face disappear. But he blinks and it’s replaced by determination. Quentin hands Julia a book. “Check through that one for anything useful. Penny, go back and get some rest.”

He’s never taken orders from Quentin Coldwater in his timeline, but Penny heaves himself to his feet to stumble back to the room he’d left. “He’s fighting to get back,” he says, turning back to them. “I don’t know what he wanted to say to you, but it seemed important. We’re gonna make sure he comes back so he can say it.” Penny’s eyes flit to Julia, his own beautiful second chance pouring over a book like she did so many times back in his own timeline.

A ghost of a smile comes to Quentin’s lips. “Yeah. Yeah we fucking are.”

Eliot wakes. He feels floaty and he’s looking up at a sky through trees. Margo’s begging him to be okay. He quips and calls her Bambi, so she’ll know it’s the real him. She’s smiling and he’s about to ask for Quentin but when he takes the breath to say it, an overwhelming pain blacks out his vision.

The next time he wakes up, he’s in Brakebills. Margo’s there again, at his side, squeezing his hand. “Hiya, Bambi.”

She smiles, but there’s tear tracks on her face. Margo doesn’t cry.

“It’s okay. I’m here, I’m me.”

Her smile fades and her tears start anew when he asks for Quentin.


	3. HAPPY CHAPTER YAY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the fix-it, non canon complaint ending. Here be happiness and no warnings needed.
> 
> It was supposed to be shorter then I had to bring things around to magic going haywire because of who I am as a person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We start with Penny's POV post Monster Mind Meld, then we switch back to Eliot.

Penny wakes up. He feels like shit warmed over, but he needs to tell Julia and Quentin what’s going on. He’s leaning heavily on the chair as he tells them. Everything Eliot told him, everything that has made this fucking fight so much harder.

Penny finally collapses on the couch because his legs are about to give out and Julia comes to his side. Quentin is still bent over a book, mouth moving as he reads. “Eliot,” Penny says.

Quentin’s head snaps up. “Did he…” his eyes dart to Julia, but he presses on, “did Eliot say anything else?”

Penny digs into his pocket and the note is there. Impossibly, miraculously, it’s there. “He wrote this for you.” He says.

Quentin stands and moves slowly, taking the paper as if it may bite him at any time. He reads silently, a smile coming his face, then he laughs. Penny doesn’t know that he has ever seen this Quentin laugh. Even once.

Julia smiles at her best friend. “What did Eliot say?”

Quentin looks up like he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. “Uh, nothing, nothing more about the quest. Just some,” he shrugs, “just some inside jokes. It’s definitely El and he’s fighting just as hard to get back to,” Penny clocks Quentin changing his mind about the next word he uses, “us.”

Julia tilts her head. “Okay.”

Quentin hands Julia a book. “Check through that one for anything useful. Penny, go back and get some rest.”

He’s never taken orders from Quentin Coldwater in his timeline, but Penny heaves himself to his feet to stumble back to the room he’d left. He stops and leans on the chair again. “Look, I don’t know what’s in that note,” though he has a pretty solid guess, “but I know we’re gonna get The Monster out of him. We’re gonna get Eliot back.” Penny’s eyes flit to Julia, his own beautiful second chance pouring over a book like she did so many times back in his own timeline.

A ghost of a smile comes to Quentin’s lips. “Yeah. Yeah we fucking are.”

Eliot wakes. He feels floaty and he’s looking up at a sky through trees. Margo’s begging him to be okay. He quips and calls her Bambi, so she’ll know it’s the real him. She’s smiling and he’s about to ask for Quentin but when he takes the breath to say it, an overwhelming pain blacks out his vision.

The next time he wakes up, he’s in Brakebills. Margo’s there again, at his side, squeezing his hand. “Hiya, Bambi.”

She smiles, but there’s tear tracks on her face. Margo doesn’t cry.

“It’s okay. I’m here, I’m me.”

“You better fucking be,” Margo says, fierce even as a new tear falls down her face. “Otherwise, we were all gonna go storm the fucking Underworld and bring you back. Quentin was this close to trying some Orpheus shit and he is, like, the worst singer.”

“He tries,” Eliot smiles softly, thinking of lullabies and goofing off at the Mosaic. “Where is he?”

Margo shakes her head, even as she pulls out her phone and starts to text. “Hot damn, new Penny was right. Now I gotta give him my very sweatfucking hard to get Galatica reservations for him to wine and dine Julia. As if this group isn’t incestuous enough. Why didn’t you tell me you two were a thing at some point? Your inability to be emotionally mature has just cost me Galatica’s truffle lobster mac’n’cheese. I’m gonna have to fuck Hoberman into making it for me.”

Eliot blinks. “I think I need some vowels, Bambi.”

All thoughts of finding out just exactly what the everloving fuck was going on with his friends disappeared when the door opened and Quentin rushed in, Julia awkwardly behind him as if she’d just chased after him.

“Q,” he can’t help whispering it.

“Eliot,” Quentin says, hurrying to his bedside before stopping a step or two away, hovering as if unsure of what he was going to do next.

Margo looks between the two of them. “KISS, you cockwipes! We all know you’re hot for each other.” She stands and shakes her head at Julia as if to say ‘our best friends are the dumbest humans in this universe’.

Julia does a finger gesture which Eliot takes to mean ‘we’ve got confirmation? Good, finally.’

Q is blushing in a fetching way that Eliot personally knows goes all the way down his chest.

“Did you,” Quentin glances briefly at the girls, “did you mean it? What you wrote?”

Eliot winces as he takes a big breath and Q is there in a second, sitting on the bed next to his stomach, which feels like it’s been punctured by something bigger than a knife. Sword maybe?

“Are you okay?” Q asks. “I mean, Margo had to stab you with an axe to get rid of The Monster,” ah, answers that then, “so you’re not okay okay, but are you-“

“I’m okay,” Eliot confirms. He looks at Quentin’s worried face and reaches out to take his hand. Know that when I’m braver, he thinks to himself. “I’m okay, Q. I’ll be fine.”

Like this was the proof he needed, Q folds over Eliot to wave him in a hug that Eliot’s sure would be tight as hell if there wasn’t a gaping wound in Eliot’s abdomen. “Scars are sexy, right? Cause I’m about certain I’m gonna have a scar.” It’s another reference to their life in Fillory. In his forties, Eliot tumbled off the ladder and tore up his right calf something fierce.

Quentin laughs wetly. “Very sexy,” Q says, following the nostalgic script, “I’m awash with lust right now, El.”

“Motherfucker,” Eliot grins to match Q’s. It’s his confirmation that what he wrote was true. That he was an idiot for turning Q down the first time, that he never stopped loving him, and that he wants them to have another lifetime together. If Q still wants him.

Their platonic soul mates are still in the room, watching, but Quentin isn’t remotely shy about dipping down to press his lips to Eliot’s. Soft, but lingering. A promise for more in the future.

They’re interrupted by Kady bursting through the doorway. “They’re back!”

The They is Penny and Alice, the latter with a sad smile on her face as she looks at Quentin gingerly laying himself next to Eliot on the cot. Apparently, they’ve just come from the Mirror World where they sent The Monster and his sister into an endless void.

“Penny travelled us out of there after I repaired the mirror and threw The Monster in, but Everett got caught in,” Alice shrugged, “whatever happens when you do magic in the Mirror World.”

Next into the rapidly diminishing space is Lipson, all but shooing everyone out of the way while she comes to check her handiwork on Eliot’s stomach.

“The good news is my surgery skills have not gotten rusty since I’ve been in the magical world,” Lipson says. “Might need a cane for a while, but I have every confidence that you’ll make a full recovery. Now,” she shakes out her hands, “The Library has stopped hoarding magic, so I can do a few-“ she tuts as she talks and barely ducks in time when a bolt of something backfires.

Everyone is quiet as they look at the smashed bottles that were behind her head.

Lipson stares down at her hands and tuts towards the chair Margo had been sitting in. It shrinks down to the size of doll furniture.

“What the peppermint mocha fuck?” Margo says.

“It should have shrunk to half its size,” Lipson frowns. “Only to half scale.”

Alice looks around anxiously. “What’s wrong with magic now?”

Margo takes a tampon from her pocket and tuts over it. It flies across the room and nearby breaks the window when it hits. “That was a levitation spell. Magic is fucked.”

“What else is new?” Quentin sighs.

Eliot holds Q’s hand. “We’ll figure it out. Well, they’ll figure it out. I will be convalescing and I demand my own personal nurse.”

Quentin grins. “I’m sure we can ask Fen if she doesn’t mind dealing with your demanding ass.”

Eliot beams at Quentin and kisses him again, reveling in the fact that he’s allowed to, before he nudges at Q’s shoulder. “Mother. Fucker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note for anyone who cares: The bit about Quentin's singing and goofing off are going to tie into another story I'm working on. It's been many many months since I could write fan fic. I'm hoping that I can get back to my more prolific ways soon.
> 
> Also I love Margo's "What the pumpkin spice fuck?" line from the new season and I HAD TO write my own version.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 2 is the sad canon complaint ending, chapter 3 is the happy fix it. Choose one or both. Some parts of the endings are identical, before they diverge into each emotion.


End file.
